Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Myself I shall adore

I saw this in Zurich and wrote about it here. It is Cecilia Bartoli in Semele from the Zurich Opera. The giant woman is Birgit Memmert in the role of Juno disguised as Ino. Cecilia is normal sized, but Birgit looms over mere mortals. She walked through the crowd of people waiting to see Cecilia and seemed a foot taller than everyone else. Semele is so self besotted that she fails to notice this.

In the performance that I saw Cecilia bounced on the bed during the cadenza. This did make her go off key a tad, but I am disappointed to see that piece of business has been cut. It was my favorite part. It was basically the funniest thing I've ever seen in an opera house. Is it my imagination, or is she laughing at the end?